6 ms·

Most successful companies I know are constantly recruiting and trying to keep people onboard - why would they be trying to actively get rid of people?

gmadsen 5y ago
that is for companies without the recruit demand. Amazon has stated before they try to remove the bottom 10% regularly to keep the average performance moving up
- nasalgoat 5y ago
  Didn't decades of that policy at Microsoft prove that it doesn't work? People then optimize to make sure they only work on projects to keep their score up.
  - tablespoon 5y ago
    > Didn't decades of that policy at Microsoft prove that it doesn't work? People then optimize to make sure they only work on projects to keep their score up. So? It's the kind policy that appeals to the prejudices of an aloof executive with a low opinion of his peons. That trumps facts.
  - mataug 5y ago
    Optimizing for projects is just one of the unintended consequences of a policy of "get rid of the bottom X%". There are many others such as, - "Hire to fire" https://archive.is/3Bdv7 https://archive.is/3Bdv7 - Overworking of employees, especially the ones who are on H1B / L1 visa since they are dependent on Amazon for their visa status. - Code is written and architected with promotions in mind. - Code is reviewed with bring others down since comments on code reviews are considered a negative metric. - No one trusts their manger.
  - mattkrause 5y ago
    Basic math too. Suppose “ability” is normally distributed in the population and in your initial team too. Replace people when the new candidate improves the team’s median ability (supposedly what Amazon’s “Bar Raiser” checks). I kicked together a simulation of this process. The first replacement is pretty easy (50/50), but the hundredth hire on a team of ten often takes tens of thousands of interviews, and sometimes over a million. No one is literally doing this.
    - BigBubbleButt 5y ago
      How many years does it take a team of 10 to get to their 100th hire? If they only replace 1 person a year, ~100 interviews a year sounds pretty normal to me (it actually sounds low compared to where I last worked where I sometimes interviewed multiple people a day).
      - mattkrause 5y ago
        I should have pointed out that it's literally an exponential growth, so it'll be fine for a while until, suddenly, it isn't. It's also very vulnerable to "founder effects" if the teams are small: a few geniuses early on make it nearly impossible to hire someone new.
    - vorticalbox 5y ago
      Would love to see this code if you don't mind sharing. Mostly interested on how you even create a simulation like this.
      - mattkrause 5y ago
        Mine is super-dumb, but let me walk you though it. First, you need to a way to generate candidates of varying abilities. There are all sorts of tough questions related to measuring intelligence, but let's side-step those and make something like IQ. By construction, IQ is normally distributed with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15. function generate_candidates(;n=1) return 100 .+ (15 .* randn(n, 1)) end With that, make the initial team and find the "bar" for a new hire: team = generate_candidates(;n=10) bar = median(team) To replace a candidate, you just sit in a loop, "interviewing" candidates until one exceeds the bar. candidates_seen = 1 while (new_candidate = generate_candidates(n=1)[1]) < bar candidates_seen += 1 end Once you find that person, you kick someone out of the team and replace them with the new candidate. I did it at random, but eliminating the lowest performer only exaggerates the effect. team[rand(1:length(team))] = c Having done that, you need to recalculate the now-raised bar: bar = median(team) We repeat this process a small number of times to simulate turn-over within a team. Since it's random, you want to repeat the entire process a number of times too. Complete code: https://gist.github.com/mrkrause/e33c589b901b4b8c96f940ea0a480b6e https://gist.github.com/mrkrause/e33c589b901b4b8c96f940ea0a4... I had a hunch this process would be exponential, and it certainly looks that way if you plot the results. This was meant as a quick-and-dirty way to check that: there are some tricks that might speed up the simulation and it might even be possible to do the whole thing analytically (but it's Friday afternoon). FWIW, I highly highly recommend this sort of noodling around for building intuitions. At work, we recently spent a year and $$$ collecting some brain data, and a dumb model like this was the key to figuring out what was going on.
  - joezydeco 5y ago
    These are all echoes of General Electric's / Jack Welch's stack-ranking 'innovation' which still gets lauded by MBA types but has been a disaster everywhere it was implemeneted.
  - sangnoir 5y ago
    Managers with good teams may bypass this by partaking in a "hire to fire" scheme where the newest joiner is guaranteed to be at the bottom of the performance list, shielding those with longer tenure. This works for a while - until word gets around, then you find your hiring funnel drying up.
- Jabrove 5y ago
  Where did they state that?
oofabz 5y ago
>why would they be trying to actively get rid of people? It's extremely demoralizing to work with people who are bad at their job. It makes me feel as though my hard work is unappreciated, because someone who is not working hard gets the same treatment. Sometimes the employee is slacking off, sometimes they are bad at their job. Either way, if their failure to contribute is bringing the rest of the team down, they have to go. Otherwise, the good people leave to get away from the bad people.
- havkom 5y ago
  I have encountered co-workers who bring a clear negative contribution to the team. I am not taking of not making enough of a value for the company for what they are paid but rather damaging the company even if they were paid nothing. These people have all been eventually let go by the different companies I have worked for.
- giantrobot 5y ago
  > It's extremely demoralizing to work with people who are bad at their job. You're assuming various PIPs are being used in good faith by the employer. In a lot of big companies there's a nebulous and hand-wave-y criteria for putting someone on a PIP and then there's no clear path for the employee off the PIP. Too often PIPs are like "mean girl" shit lists. You can get on one without knowing it and have little to no agency in getting off one. For companies that do stack ranking, you can end up on a PIP just for happening to be at the bottom of the stack for no real fault of your own. The employer is then happy to dick you with compensation for as long as they can justify keeping you on a PIP. It's more demoralizing to end up black balled and screwed over on compensation than just being told outright you're on a PIP and there's some particular goals to hit to get off. Not everyone can just jump ship after they get stiffed on compensation after a review. The goal is to demoralize people so they quit so they don't have to fire them and potentially end up with some wrongful termination lawsuit.
- greedo 5y ago
  So many companies I deal with have extremely poor management teams and practices. Things like stack-ranking, vague job descriptions/responsibilities, managers who aren't technical, the list is endemic to IT. You want demoralizing? How about being an excellent employee, but being told that you can only get a COLA raise because your manager has been told only 2 out of a team of 15 can "exceed standards?" And these standards are as vague as HR can possibly make them. So unless you're sociopathic, you try to "improve" which generally means kissing up to your boss. Doing a better job revolves around keeping your boss happy, regardless of whether that means your real work is being done at an "exceeds" level. Find out what metrics he considers important, and focus almost exclusively on them. If you're sociopathic, you do this, while sabotaging your coworkers. It's pretty easy to do; keep important information away from them, point out any flaws/mistakes they make, etc. Any large organization will end up like this if they follow traditional HR guidelines for performance evals. It's part of a competitive environment. The only place I've seen it work better/differently was when the entire team was evaluated. That helped prevent the Machiavellian sabotage, but did allow lower performers to benefit from the work of the higher performers. But that would happen anyway; you can't fire everyone. And the motivation of the coworkers shifts from competitive to cooperative. Helping others learn new things, overcome issues, etc. When management gets behind this, it's amazing, but most managers and executives are discouraged from trying new things.
sangnoir 5y ago
> why would they be trying to actively get rid of people? It's the same idea behind stack ranking: get good recruits, while getting rid of the under-performers who either slip-through, or whose performance deteriorated while on the job. Amazon would like to think they are keeping the good people onboard and throwing out the deadwood.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

gmadsen 5y ago

that is for companies without the recruit demand. Amazon has stated before they try to remove the bottom 10% regularly to keep the average performance moving up

nasalgoat 5y ago
Didn't decades of that policy at Microsoft prove that it doesn't work? People then optimize to make sure they only work on projects to keep their score up.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > Didn't decades of that policy at Microsoft prove that it doesn't work? People then optimize to make sure they only work on projects to keep their score up. So? It's the kind policy that appeals to the prejudices of an aloof executive with a low opinion of his peons. That trumps facts.
- mataug 5y ago
  Optimizing for projects is just one of the unintended consequences of a policy of "get rid of the bottom X%". There are many others such as, - "Hire to fire" https://archive.is/3Bdv7 https://archive.is/3Bdv7 - Overworking of employees, especially the ones who are on H1B / L1 visa since they are dependent on Amazon for their visa status. - Code is written and architected with promotions in mind. - Code is reviewed with bring others down since comments on code reviews are considered a negative metric. - No one trusts their manger.
- mattkrause 5y ago
  Basic math too. Suppose “ability” is normally distributed in the population and in your initial team too. Replace people when the new candidate improves the team’s median ability (supposedly what Amazon’s “Bar Raiser” checks). I kicked together a simulation of this process. The first replacement is pretty easy (50/50), but the hundredth hire on a team of ten often takes tens of thousands of interviews, and sometimes over a million. No one is literally doing this.
  - BigBubbleButt 5y ago
    How many years does it take a team of 10 to get to their 100th hire? If they only replace 1 person a year, ~100 interviews a year sounds pretty normal to me (it actually sounds low compared to where I last worked where I sometimes interviewed multiple people a day).
    - mattkrause 5y ago
      I should have pointed out that it's literally an exponential growth, so it'll be fine for a while until, suddenly, it isn't. It's also very vulnerable to "founder effects" if the teams are small: a few geniuses early on make it nearly impossible to hire someone new.
  - vorticalbox 5y ago
    Would love to see this code if you don't mind sharing. Mostly interested on how you even create a simulation like this.
    - mattkrause 5y ago
      Mine is super-dumb, but let me walk you though it. First, you need to a way to generate candidates of varying abilities. There are all sorts of tough questions related to measuring intelligence, but let's side-step those and make something like IQ. By construction, IQ is normally distributed with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15. function generate_candidates(;n=1) return 100 .+ (15 .* randn(n, 1)) end With that, make the initial team and find the "bar" for a new hire: team = generate_candidates(;n=10) bar = median(team) To replace a candidate, you just sit in a loop, "interviewing" candidates until one exceeds the bar. candidates_seen = 1 while (new_candidate = generate_candidates(n=1)[1]) < bar candidates_seen += 1 end Once you find that person, you kick someone out of the team and replace them with the new candidate. I did it at random, but eliminating the lowest performer only exaggerates the effect. team[rand(1:length(team))] = c Having done that, you need to recalculate the now-raised bar: bar = median(team) We repeat this process a small number of times to simulate turn-over within a team. Since it's random, you want to repeat the entire process a number of times too. Complete code: https://gist.github.com/mrkrause/e33c589b901b4b8c96f940ea0a480b6e https://gist.github.com/mrkrause/e33c589b901b4b8c96f940ea0a4... I had a hunch this process would be exponential, and it certainly looks that way if you plot the results. This was meant as a quick-and-dirty way to check that: there are some tricks that might speed up the simulation and it might even be possible to do the whole thing analytically (but it's Friday afternoon). FWIW, I highly highly recommend this sort of noodling around for building intuitions. At work, we recently spent a year and $$$ collecting some brain data, and a dumb model like this was the key to figuring out what was going on.
- joezydeco 5y ago
  These are all echoes of General Electric's / Jack Welch's stack-ranking 'innovation' which still gets lauded by MBA types but has been a disaster everywhere it was implemeneted.
- sangnoir 5y ago
  Managers with good teams may bypass this by partaking in a "hire to fire" scheme where the newest joiner is guaranteed to be at the bottom of the performance list, shielding those with longer tenure. This works for a while - until word gets around, then you find your hiring funnel drying up.
Jabrove 5y ago
Where did they state that?

oofabz 5y ago

>why would they be trying to actively get rid of people? It's extremely demoralizing to work with people who are bad at their job. It makes me feel as though my hard work is unappreciated, because someone who is not working hard gets the same treatment. Sometimes the employee is slacking off, sometimes they are bad at their job. Either way, if their failure to contribute is bringing the rest of the team down, they have to go. Otherwise, the good people leave to get away from the bad people.

havkom 5y ago
I have encountered co-workers who bring a clear negative contribution to the team. I am not taking of not making enough of a value for the company for what they are paid but rather damaging the company even if they were paid nothing. These people have all been eventually let go by the different companies I have worked for.
giantrobot 5y ago
> It's extremely demoralizing to work with people who are bad at their job. You're assuming various PIPs are being used in good faith by the employer. In a lot of big companies there's a nebulous and hand-wave-y criteria for putting someone on a PIP and then there's no clear path for the employee off the PIP. Too often PIPs are like "mean girl" shit lists. You can get on one without knowing it and have little to no agency in getting off one. For companies that do stack ranking, you can end up on a PIP just for happening to be at the bottom of the stack for no real fault of your own. The employer is then happy to dick you with compensation for as long as they can justify keeping you on a PIP. It's more demoralizing to end up black balled and screwed over on compensation than just being told outright you're on a PIP and there's some particular goals to hit to get off. Not everyone can just jump ship after they get stiffed on compensation after a review. The goal is to demoralize people so they quit so they don't have to fire them and potentially end up with some wrongful termination lawsuit.
greedo 5y ago
So many companies I deal with have extremely poor management teams and practices. Things like stack-ranking, vague job descriptions/responsibilities, managers who aren't technical, the list is endemic to IT. You want demoralizing? How about being an excellent employee, but being told that you can only get a COLA raise because your manager has been told only 2 out of a team of 15 can "exceed standards?" And these standards are as vague as HR can possibly make them. So unless you're sociopathic, you try to "improve" which generally means kissing up to your boss. Doing a better job revolves around keeping your boss happy, regardless of whether that means your real work is being done at an "exceeds" level. Find out what metrics he considers important, and focus almost exclusively on them. If you're sociopathic, you do this, while sabotaging your coworkers. It's pretty easy to do; keep important information away from them, point out any flaws/mistakes they make, etc. Any large organization will end up like this if they follow traditional HR guidelines for performance evals. It's part of a competitive environment. The only place I've seen it work better/differently was when the entire team was evaluated. That helped prevent the Machiavellian sabotage, but did allow lower performers to benefit from the work of the higher performers. But that would happen anyway; you can't fire everyone. And the motivation of the coworkers shifts from competitive to cooperative. Helping others learn new things, overcome issues, etc. When management gets behind this, it's amazing, but most managers and executives are discouraged from trying new things.

sangnoir 5y ago

> why would they be trying to actively get rid of people? It's the same idea behind stack ranking: get good recruits, while getting rid of the under-performers who either slip-through, or whose performance deteriorated while on the job. Amazon would like to think they are keeping the good people onboard and throwing out the deadwood.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]